1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns devices connected to a network that expose functionality through one or more Web Services accessible via a Web Service access protocol. More particularly, the invention concerns a network printer exposing print functionality through a Print Web Service accessible via the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The Print Web Service provides multiple listening endpoints and uses the endpoint targeted in an incoming SOAP message as a hint to determine the message type of the incoming message even before handling the SOAP message so that the Web Service can be specifically configured to handle each SOAP message type in possibly different ways to achieve improved performance.
2. Description of the Related Art
The advent of standardized Web Service access protocols has allowed computing devices to expose functionality over decentralized, distributed networking environments. One such Web Service access protocol is the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). SOAP encompasses multiple Web Service actions and multiple different communication protocols. Some examples of communication protocols capable of transmitting SOAP messages include Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Post Office Protocol (POP), Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), Simple MIME Exchange Protocol (SMXP), Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol (BEEP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), IBM MQSeries, Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ), and Java Messaging Service (JMS).
Currently, devices exposing one or more Web Services via a Web Service access protocol listen to a single listening endpoint to receive requests for all Web Service actions. Since requests for different Web Service actions may utilize different underlying communication protocols, the listening endpoint must handle all supported communication protocols. Furthermore these requests are contained in SOAP messages, and devices cannot identify the requested Web Service action before decoding the SOAP message. As a consequence, the listening endpoint is written generically to handle all supported communication protocols and all supported Web Service actions. Therefore, this generic listening endpoint is unable to achieve improved performance when handling all requests.
The invention recognizes that, if only a single SOAP message type encompassing a distinct grouping of Web Service actions and a distinct set of communication protocols is expected at a particular listening endpoint, then the listening endpoint can be. specifically configured to handle that SOAP message type. Thus, the Web Service can achieve improved performance when handling a SOAP message type with a specific set of handling requirements.